Overview:
Goldsmith originally published "Soliloquy" as a "text installation" (Perloff) in 2001. The basis of the experiment he conducted was to record everything he said over the course of a typical seven days.To accomplish this, he wore a wire and recorded what became almost 500 pages of his own work (Perloff). The hypothesis of the experiment was to prove that Goldsmith produced many valuable contributions to language throughout the course of a given week that were essentially being lost in casual conversation. The actual results lead him to conclude the exact opposite. Goldsmith remarked that "the [results] were humiliating and humbling seeing how little 'value' I actually spoke over the course of the week. I discovered how unprofound my life was and how petty, greedy, and nasty I [was] in normal speech." In his own defense, he issues a challenge to his readers/viewers to follow his example with a similar experiment to see if their results yield anything different. He anticipates, "their lives [will be] filled with trivial linguistic exchanges."
Textual and Media Features:
Boring--plain white backdrop with simplistic gray font
Simple organization--broken into the seven days of the week by letter and within each day by chapters 1-10
No real end point--you stop when you get tired
You are able to navigate forward and backward through the days of the week and the chapters within each day
Generative Text that was not originally electronic (Perloff)
Ultimate digitally driven text, programmed to eliminate "noise" (Perloff)
Decontextualized speech (we have no idea who Goldsmith is talking to)
Speech is artificial because it "splices together all instances of speech, omitting the silences and interruptions" (Perloff). No sense of elapsed time.
Text is actually there, but the mouse must be pointed at a word or phrase to make it visible.
Appears to read from left to right, linearly, sometimes. Other times, there seems to be no discernible pattern.
Contains an "About" button that explains the rationale behind the project and a "Search" button that allows you to search any word within the document. This offers some external order to the seemingly random conversation.
Reading Experience:
Low level of interactivity. Disappointing visually after many of the other texts we have seen. Lack of sound does not help interactive experience. I stopped trying to make meaning quickly and just started randomly moving all over the page to see what "popped up."
Analysis/Interpretation:
I think Goldsmith had a good concept when he decided to attempt this experiment, but like the results of the experiment itself, the final digital product seems to want for quite a bit. The decontextulaized speech makes it hard to discern any pattern of meaning; most of the time, we cannot even figure out who he is talking to. I wonder if he had transcribed this as a dialogue instead of a monologue if it would have been more dynamic and engaging. I wanted another perspective, another font color, changes in font to suggest emotion, maybe some voices reading their responses. I wanted the text to visually layer on the screen, showing the complexity of communication, if only from a one-sided perspective. I realize this was originally created for a print medium, and it seems to me that it remains stuck in that medium. The objective distance of the reader renders the piece cold and difficult to engage. The only part I really found thought provoking was the initial question that begins the whole "interaction." How do we communicate with one another? Do we really listen to others or is the chatter of everyday life so mundane that no "valuable" meaning can be derived from it? Do we tune others out in the same fashion that we quickly get bored with and tune this text out? To end on something positive, I do think the piece is interesting because of the stream of conscious aspect. We are never certain where Goldsmith is, who he is speaking to, or what pauses occur in the conversation. This adds an element of suspense and necessitates a small degree of reader involvement. It seems I have developed an expectation for what constitutes digital literature that this piece just doesn't meet.
Melissa Green
http://collection.eliterature.org/1/works/goldsmith__soliloquy.html
Overview:
Goldsmith originally published "Soliloquy" as a "text installation" (Perloff) in 2001. The basis of the experiment he conducted was to record everything he said over the course of a typical seven days.To accomplish this, he wore a wire and recorded what became almost 500 pages of his own work (Perloff). The hypothesis of the experiment was to prove that Goldsmith produced many valuable contributions to language throughout the course of a given week that were essentially being lost in casual conversation. The actual results lead him to conclude the exact opposite. Goldsmith remarked that "the [results] were humiliating and humbling seeing how little 'value' I actually spoke over the course of the week. I discovered how unprofound my life was and how petty, greedy, and nasty I [was] in normal speech." In his own defense, he issues a challenge to his readers/viewers to follow his example with a similar experiment to see if their results yield anything different. He anticipates, "their lives [will be] filled with trivial linguistic exchanges."
Textual and Media Features:
Reading Experience:
Low level of interactivity. Disappointing visually after many of the other texts we have seen. Lack of sound does not help interactive experience. I stopped trying to make meaning quickly and just started randomly moving all over the page to see what "popped up."
Analysis/Interpretation:
I think Goldsmith had a good concept when he decided to attempt this experiment, but like the results of the experiment itself, the final digital product seems to want for quite a bit. The decontextulaized speech makes it hard to discern any pattern of meaning; most of the time, we cannot even figure out who he is talking to. I wonder if he had transcribed this as a dialogue instead of a monologue if it would have been more dynamic and engaging. I wanted another perspective, another font color, changes in font to suggest emotion, maybe some voices reading their responses. I wanted the text to visually layer on the screen, showing the complexity of communication, if only from a one-sided perspective. I realize this was originally created for a print medium, and it seems to me that it remains stuck in that medium. The objective distance of the reader renders the piece cold and difficult to engage. The only part I really found thought provoking was the initial question that begins the whole "interaction." How do we communicate with one another? Do we really listen to others or is the chatter of everyday life so mundane that no "valuable" meaning can be derived from it? Do we tune others out in the same fashion that we quickly get bored with and tune this text out? To end on something positive, I do think the piece is interesting because of the stream of conscious aspect. We are never certain where Goldsmith is, who he is speaking to, or what pauses occur in the conversation. This adds an element of suspense and necessitates a small degree of reader involvement. It seems I have developed an expectation for what constitutes digital literature that this piece just doesn't meet.